


Risa

by facetofcathy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Allusions to Sexual Assault, Episode Related, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:44:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is about Risa, and deals with ideas and issues around rape culture. This is what I saw when I watched episode 5.04: The End.</p><p>This story may be upsetting or contain triggers for some people, and does contain brief, graphic descriptions of violence and character death that were alluded to or shown in the episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Risa

Dean wasn't a talker in the normal course of things. Not even when he was drinking, or the rare occasions when he sat in on one of Castiel's hookah parties. But get him in your bed, and in the twilight time between orgasm and sleep, he'd show you little pieces of himself. If you could look beyond the lies, and the obfuscations and the denial.

Choices were his favourite topic. As in, how he didn't have any, had never had any. "I feel the hand of God on my back, shoving me down the road, doesn't matter what I do, that's where I'm going," he'd said once.

She'd sat in a school counselor's office, in another time, in another world, and he'd told her that she could do anything, be anything, go anywhere. And she'd almost believed him.

She'd made her choices, and never felt any hand on her back pushing her along, only hands grasping at her trying to hold her back.

College, but not music. A BA, but nothing more. Chicago, but not farther away from home. Her own apartment, but not alone, always a roommate for safety.

The world didn't end, that's the thing. It still spun around the sun, and day turned to night turned to day. There were still choices, and there were still grasping hands. She bruised more easily these days.

The virus begat chaos, and chaos was a good cover for someone who'd been poised to run their whole life and just didn't know it. She ran. She ran away from her life and right into a new one. Not a choice, an accident, and she felt no hand of any god pushing her.

Groups formed and split and reformed, like molecules joining up and breaking apart, like bits of melody that trailed off and started up again with a new tune.

She chose. The more women the better, she thought. Spread the risk, she thought but never said aloud.

She chose a man that would teach her guns and knives, and what she learned is that fleet feet mattered more.

She chose groups that wanted to fight, because just existing hadn't been enough even in the old world.

She chose the unholy trinity, a man who said he had been an Angel, a man who said he had been a Prophet and a man who lamented the hand of God that drove him ever onward.

She chose a cabin by herself. She had never, not once, lived alone. She didn't imagine that the gun by her bed kept her safe.

She could choose the Angel's Harem. It wouldn't require much effort to show her body and laugh at his antics and pet his fevered brow when he despaired of what he had lost, but she chose instead to walk on by and whistle a little Mozart and wonder if anyone got the joke.

She chose Dean and let him think he'd chosen her. That hadn't required much effort either, but she would not bind herself to him; he was a man walking to his death, anyone could see that, and a dead man sheltered no one.

He told her lies with his words, and she told him lies with her body, and she thought she might be safe alone, that the illusion of his protection was enough, at least for a while. Sometimes there was truth buried in his lies, and she thought about that, wondered if everything her body said back to him was false.

And then he walked out of Jane's cabin in full view of half the compound. She wanted to throttle him, shake him, ask him how he could be so intensely, willfully stupid. Paint a target on my back, why don't you, she would scream at him, but he would simply look at her, sorrowfully confused, blind to the ways of this new world. Not so different from the old.

She played the woman scorned instead, and her fury was real enough, if not quite truthfully told, and it didn't matter a damn, because he was marching along to his appointment with the Devil, the hand of God at his back, and she really did have a target on hers. He just hadn't told her.

He had betrayed them all, even his Angel, sent them to their deaths. They fell around her, the familiar stench of blood and offal, the snap of bones, the screams of the dying. But her, her they snatched up with their grabbing hands, seeing the transient value of her body, and choosing to spare her life.

They carried her to Him, her own appointment with the Devil, and she started laughing when they stepped over the corpse of her dead protector, and she laughed harder as He looked at her flesh with hunger and told her truth and lies so tangled up no one could ever unravel them.

She'd been sidestepping this fate for years, making this choice, choosing that action, giving up on one thing to have another, and yet, here she was at the end. And the only thing she could think of was that God should have slapped her on the back, given her that special gun that could kill the Devil, because it was always going to be her that finished up here. In the end. Not Dean.


End file.
